


Fire, Death and Ice-cream

by TheBookTheDragonSaved



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bars and Pubs, Books, Brownies, Canon ships (except for the main one), Chance Meetings, Chess, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Loki (Marvel) is Not Amused, Mantis is tougher than you think, Meddling Frigga and Heimdall, Mischief, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pool & Billiards, Some Plot, Tags Are Hard, We need more Loki and Mantis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23856244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookTheDragonSaved/pseuds/TheBookTheDragonSaved
Summary: In which Loki, Prince of Asgard, and Mantis – you know, that random chick with the antennae – come to an accord about the real value of smashing each other’s faces in.Because I have found a truly deplorable lack of Mantis and Loki fanfics (and just Mantis in general, come on guys) and this is a grievous injustice which must be righted.I shall begin with something light-hearted :)
Relationships: Gamora/Peter Quill, Loki & Mantis (Marvel), Loki/Mantis (Marvel), Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Quill & Guardians of the Galaxy Team
Kudos: 31





	1. What's up, New York?

**Author's Note:**

> Further summary:
> 
> Not set anywhere in particular canon-wise. Everyone's alive, so that I can have them drop in at random points. Uhh... All canon relationships except main one. Probably some Irondad-Spiderson because duh. Hope y'all enjoy!

### What's up, New York?

It was generally agreed upon, those days, that New York was really a very strange city. From wizards, to flying metal men and spaceships, New York was the new home of all things peculiar. Crop-circle specialists and conspiracy-theorists had moved in by the dozens, leaving their fly-by-night UFO sightings (behold; a pun!) and testimonies from the village crackpot in favour of richer meats. It is sad to say, however, that in a world where you could throw a dart at a board of mythical creatures, and have at least a 60% chance of the thing it landed on being real, these ‘seekers of truth’ still managed to be wrong most of the time.

One of their favourite things to be wrong about (second only to how Tony Stark and Dr Steven Strange were actually two metaphysical representations of the same original person – it was the beards that tipped them off.) was predicting the moves of a certain villainous Asgardian.  
For Loki, Prince of Asgard, was back in town.

He was not, luckily, back in a ‘let’s-give-the-world-domination-thing-another-try’ facility and kept mostly to small-scale mischief; blowing up the occasional building, turning shipments of drilling equipment to bananas, that sort of thing. Indeed, his various escapades became something of a staple in New York life. A family night out might include dinner at a restaurant; a stop at the ice-cream parlour on the corner; and a friendly jaunt to gawk at the latest monument to be magically turned fuchsia. Since New York now repelled at least three alien invasions a month, Loki’s antics suddenly seemed far less threatening.

That is not to say that no attempts were made to stop him. The Avengers were on-call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and pitched battles with Loki seemed to occur every twenty minutes. They had shifts for dealing with him by this point, recorded as a timetable in Cap’s neat script, fixed to the refrigerator door with an ‘I _am_ Iron Man’ magnet, and later entitled ‘Babysitting Schedule’ by a messy Stark-scribble at the top of the page.

Tuesdays were the jurisdiction of the Guardians, so when the alarm rang, there were a chorus of grumbled curse-words (Rocket and Quill); some enthusiastically blown raspberries (Groot) and a subsequent scolding (Gamora). Drax just bellowed something unintelligible around a mouthful of peanut butter, and grabbed his knives. Wackiscisms* and tomfoolery included, the Guardians somehow still managed to be out the door in less than two minutes, and on their way to Central Park, where a squadron of magically enhanced squirrels was apparently terrorising pedestrians, under Loki’s command.

The sight that greeted them when they arrived was somehow _more_ absurd than they had expected. Flying about two stories in the air, Peter could see that the squirrels were each between 7 to 8 feet tall, and all had fur that gradated between various shades of pastel pinks, greens and blues. By the tone of their debrief on the way down, he had assumed the squirrels were attacking, or at least vicious, but in truth, they seemed just as confused as he was.

One of them was sitting calmly on one of those classic wooden picnic tables that has the benches attached, and Peter could hear the wood groaning in protest at the weight. The baby blue squirrel flicked its ear in annoyance as a screaming pedestrian ran past, but didn’t otherwise seem bothered, so Peter kept looking. Behind it, another squirrel (this one a lovely shade of pea green) was trying to climb a young oak tree, seemingly unaware that its new size actually made it wider than the tree’s trunk.

“I am Groot,” said Groot.

“Oh, _that’s_ Wendy?” Peter asked in surprise. “Sure buddy, go save your girl.”

Groot grunted in appreciation and lumbered off to prevent ‘Wendy’ from being crushed by her new eight-foot tall admirer. Peter was tempted to send Mantis with him – she would, as usual, be the best way of subduing the enemy (squirrels. enemy squirrels; because _that’s_ normal) without endangering any civilians – but this kind of magical mayhem could have only one source, and this time, Peter wanted to catch him. He brought one hand up to his comm.

“Gamora, you there?”

“Standing by.” Peter almost jumped when her perfectly transmitted voice came through the tiny speaker in his ear, and he resisted the urge to look to his right. Sometimes these StarkTech gadgets were a little too good.

“You see ‘em?” he asked.

“I’m looking,” came her reply. “But I can’t- wait; there! 2 o’clock; top of the building!”

Peter looked quickly over to the roof of the seven-story tall building at his 2, and sure enough, there was a tiny trace of green and black watching the chaos. It was too far away, but Peter fancied he could still see the condescending smirk on the quasi-god’s face.

“That’s him,” Gamora confirmed.

“Well then, what are we waitin’ for?” came Rocket’s bored voice in his earpiece.

“Indeed.” Drax this time. “We shall bathe in blood this day!”

“Is the building empty?” Mantis asked from the roof of a kiosk to his left, the direction his only indication that she was actually there, and not in his earpiece.

 _Good point._ “Should be,” he replied. It looked like a corporately owned building and evacuation of staff was basically a company hobby these days. “Keep an eye on him for me, ‘kay Mantis? – Drax, buddy, you can bathe in blood in a minute.”

Drax sounded displeased. “Very well; I will count the seconds.”

“…”

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5-”

“I am Groot!”

Rocket hissed. “Seriously, dude?”

“Count in your head, Drax,” Gamora scolded.

The voices in Peter’s ear collapsed into squabbling so he tuned them out and focused on the infrared display in his visor, sweeping his gaze up and down the building.

“All clear,” he announced once he was satisfied. “Guys?”

“-damn annoying-”

“-is my right-”

“-am Groot-”

“Guys!” yelled Peter. “Homicidal god; get your _priorities_ straight.”

There were more voices on the other end of the line as Gamora berated the team, and then finally, silence.

“He is not moving,” Mantis said quietly.

Peter glanced at the figure on the roof. Sure enough, he was still sitting exactly where he had been before, staring down at them.

“Then we’ll just have to go to him. Gamora? Plan of attack?” He shifted his gaze down to where she stood in the shared shade of a tree and a giant squirrel, peering up at their target building. Drax was trying to climb the squirrel, which kept flicking him off, and Rocket was just a tiny blob of brown on the grass.

“Does it even matter?” the blob grumbled. “He’s just gonna disappear the moment we get close, anyway. He always does.”

“Everything’s impossible until it’s done, dude.”

“Yeah, well; some things really are just impossible. Also, I hate you.”

“Uh-huh. Gamora?”

“Well,” she said distractedly, studying something on her wrist. "Since you've finished flirting, I _have_ downloaded the schematics for the building-”

“That’s great!”

“Flirting?” Rocket said indignantly.

“-and it looks like there are two stair wells and an elevator shaft that go from top to bottom.”

“That’s a lot of exits,” Peter observed worriedly.

From his bird’s eye view, he saw Gamora’s shoulders move in a tiny shrug. “He can turn into a bird,” she pointed out. “The roof itself is an exit.”

“I wish _I_ could turn into a bird,” Mantis mused, and Peter didn’t really know how to respond to that, (other than ‘heck yeah’, obviously) so he just ignored it.

“We’ve got to pin him down,” he said instead.

“No duh, Quill,” Rocket drawled, and Peter had to clench his jaw to stop himself from swearing at the raccoon.

“He’s usually looking for a _bit_ of a fight,” Gamora said, also ignoring Rocket. “So we can probably at least reach him. He’ll just leave almost the moment we do.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yeah,” acknowledged Peter. “But it’s not a very _big_ window. And none of us are strong enough to get him in just one hit.”

“I am strong enough,” decided Drax.

Mantis shook her head. “He is not – Gamora!”

The warning came just in time for Gamora to rugby-tackle Drax to the ground and stop him running headlong into the building.

Drax bellowed angrily as he fell. “It has been a minute!”

Peter groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. “It was a figure of- oh never mind.” If Drax didn’t understand what a metaphor was by now, he never would. “So, anyone got any ideas? Or shall we just all follow Drax and hope for the best.”

“Follow Drax!” shouted Drax, except it was muffled by his face being in the dirt, with Gamora sitting comfortably on top of him, meaning it might have been: “For the wax!” Nothing was too strange for these weirdoes, so Peter didn’t discount it.

“I’ve got an idea,” Rocket said smugly.

“I veto it,” Gamora said immediately.

_Uh-oh._

“You haven’t even heard it yet!” protested Rocket. “It could be perfectly reasonable.”

“Unlikely,” muttered Gamora, at the same time Peter said warily, “Is it?”

He could almost hear the feral grin in Rocket’s voice. “That depends. How full is this week’s damages  
fund?”

_*Wackiscisms: Noun (pl.) – Shenanigans; absurd happenings. OR Personal habits, tics and peculiarities. Not a real word, but it should be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People who write Mantis and Loki fanfiction deserve to own their own squadron of pastel squirrels. 
> 
> Translation: Anyone who writes Mantis and Loki fanfiction (slash or not), you have my word that I will read it. Just... think about it? They have a surprising amount in common.
> 
> SEE YAS NEXT TIME (*blearghs into the sunset*)


	2. So there's like, lots of yelling. And cartwheels?

“Ye-hes!” Drax roared. “This will be a good plan; I can feel it! We mu- _oof._ ”

“No,” Gamora said, raising her hand from where she had shoved Drax’s face into the dirt. “Any plan that starts with the question ‘how much money do we have to fix broken buildings’ is bad by definition. Just no.”

Peter wanted really badly to side immediately with Gamora, but they’d been chasing Loki for months, and never gotten close. Times were desperate. Besides, could you imagine the street-cred if they got the bugger when the Avengers had _all_ failed? He gritted his teeth. “What’s the idea?” he asked.

“Peter!” Gamora snapped.

“I know, I know! Let’s just hear him out. We probably won’t do it anyway.” He could almost hear her _yeah right_ , but she didn’t say it out loud and, good lord, he could actually hear Rocket smiling.

“First thing’s first,” the raccoon began smugly. “Gamora, how far through the building does that elevator shaft go?”

“I will not-”

“Gamora,” Peter warned.

“All the way to the top, and two stories down from ground level,” she said shortly.

Rocket hummed. “I assume it doesn’t actually come out on the roof?”

“No; top floor is its limit.”

“Think it’s strong enough for a gravity well?” asked Rocket casually.

Dead silence.

“Absolutely _not_ ,” declared Gamora.

“Are you insane?” Peter asked, genuinely curious.

“What?” Rocket said defensively. “It ain’t _that_ crazy. It’s a similar structure; and with those blueprints, I can calculate the building’s stress-bearing capabilities easy-peasy!”

“Oh, easy-peasy, huh?” said Peter scathingly. “Where the whole building collapses if you’re wrong?”

“Meh.”

“ _Meh?_ ” repeated Peter incredulously.

“Come on, Quill,” Rocket said in a tone of voice that could only be described as ‘wheedling’. “Don’t you wanna catch this guy?”

“I’m not blowing up a building to do it,” Peter said sternly. _Damn raccoon_.

“Nothing’s going to blow up,” reassured Rocket. “C’mon, Pete. When have I ever let you down?”

“All the time,” Gamora said flatly. “Literally all the time. You are a _terrible_ person, Rocket.”

Rocket ignored her. “Pete?”

No sane captain would go along with a plan like this, and Peter knew it. He shook his head firmly. “Gamora’s right, Rocket,” he decided. “There is no way in hell we are doing this plan.”

They did the plan.

<><><><><>

“So, does this make me insane, or what?” came Peter’s voice in Mantis’s ear. She didn’t wear the tiny little earpiece unless she could help it; the thing vibrated strangely in her head, but she cared less about vibrations than dying, so she allowed it.

“Not if we win,” Rocket replied. “History is written by the victors, Quill.” Mantis ignored the puppy’s words (she did know he was not a puppy, but he was not really anything else either), and instead glanced around at her surroundings once more. Grey, stone walls bore in upon her from every side, covered partially by the desks that she had heaped up under Quill’s orders, away from the hollow column in the centre of the room that was the elevator shaft.

The plan was relatively simple, by Rocket’s twisted standards. At Gamora’s insistence, Groot had agreed to shepherd pedestrians away from the building, just in case something went terribly wrong. The teenager had offered only token resistance at being removed from the battle, and Mantis guessed he wanted to be near Wendy, the pretty little oak tree who he had been growing steadily closer to over the course of the summer.

Drax and Gamora were running individually up the two flights of staircases that led onto the roof, to cut off Loki’s escape routes. Taking Gamora’s warning about the Loki’s shapeshifting abilities, Peter was flying up the side of the building with his jetpack, ready to come in from above.

Rocket had already been down in the basement with her to set up the base of the gravity well – Mantis likened the machine to a Uthridian cabbage, because of the potential for electrocution – and then had scurried up the elevator shaft to install the upper machinery. He would then join the others in storming the roof and driving Loki to the spot of concrete over the gravity well, which would at that point be activated.

Although the gravity well would likely be destroyed by Loki’s impact on the elevator shaft floor, he should still be dazed enough for Mantis to dart quickly in and put him to sleep. If he wasn’t, she would be left alone in a basement with a murderous god, and the other Guardians all too far away to offer assistance.

Best not to dwell on these things, she had learned. 

It was hard not to be nervous here though, with the stuffy underground room evoking unwanted memories. She tried to imagine Drax laughing at her for her cowardice, and hopped determinedly on one foot, as if trying to shake her brain into compliance. The movement successfully dispelled the awkward feeling of heaviness, and she could still hear Drax and Gamora puffing up the stairs, so she yawned like a cat and switched to turning slow cartwheels around the central pillar while she waited: Left foot; right foot; right hand; left foot. Cold, nasty stone all around.

Finally, Gamora’s voice came vibrating through her skull. “Mantis?”

Mantis paused mid-cartwheel, balancing calmly on one hand. “Here.”

“Everything’s in position. You ready to go?”

Mantis gave the dead walls one last forlorn look and sucked in a breath of stale-tasting air to calm herself, resisting the urge to stick her tongue out in distaste. “Ready,” she said firmly.

Her deep breath was echoed by the others in the group, creating an odd, wind-like effect along the comms. 

“You heard the girl,” Peter ordered. “Let’s go!”

There was one last moment of near-silence, broken only by the patter of feet on stone and the steadily ascending whine of Peter’s jetpack, and then…

Oh. And then nothing.

That was unusua-

“AHHHHHHH!!”

Mantis yelped in surprise at Drax’s war cry and overbalanced, sprawling in a heap on the floor. Usually the comms transmitted some of the sounds of battle, b-

“LEFT, Rocket, _left_!”

Ouch. Peter’s scream was like a needle in her ear, interrupting her th-

“EAT _THIS_!!”

-oughts! Interrupting her _thoughts_. Mantis hissed; scrambled to her feet (now thoroughly miffed) and pawed indignantly at her ringing ear.

It was a strange way to observe a battle. There were no explosions, no blasting, no scrape of metal on metal, only the stillness in the basement on one side, and the furious shouts of the combatants on the other. It was like the earpiece was a window to anothe-

“I’LL SHOW YOU INELEGANT, YOU GOLD-HORNED BRAT!!”

Damn it, guys; the _narrator_!? You do _want_ this story to keep going, don’t you?

The intermittent yelling continued, interspersed with grunts and shouts of exertion, growing steadily more elated as they drove the villain closer and closer to the patch of concrete above the rigged-up elevator shaft.

“NOW, ROCKET!” Peter yelled triumphantly, and Mantis tensed, ready to dart forward and grab the Asgardian the moment he hit the shaft floor.

Then everything went wrong.

I mean, not _everything_. People are constantly using that sentence, and it feels like a bit of an exaggeration most of the time, so maybe I should clarify: _Something_ went wrong. It was a pretty big something, and it probably felt a lot like everything to the people involved, but it was not _literally_ everything.

Though it was still quite a lot.

For, unbeknownst to the Guardians, the building they were currently standing in was owned by none other than Mr. Barry Nelson of Nelson Incorporated. Mr. Nelson was the kind of man who you would prepare your house for by stapling your bills to your wallet, and hiding your best silver under an upturned fruit-basket. If you lived or worked in a building owned by his company, the first thing you were given was a list of prohibited behaviours, including shouting, particularly forceful sneezing, and jumping too high. These behaviours were all considered too dangerous to be permissible in the cheaply built properties overseen by Mr. Nelson, and performing them was grounds for expulsion.

Essentially, a particularly stiff breeze would have been enough to knock the building over, and the Guardians had just installed a highly volatile piece of alien technology designed – quite literally – to bring things crashing down.

The moment Rocket activated the gravity well, a ray of blue light expanded in a column at the shaft’s centre, with a _sucking_ sensation that made Mantis’s ears pop. She poked her head around the edge of the door frame to see a square of daylight appear at the top, and something the size of a man being pulled down among chunks of concrete. It flashed once, twice, shifting desperately between forms but obviously unable to break the stream’s grip. The plan was working.

Then, without warning, the column flared bright red, burning itself onto Mantis’s retinas, and the whole building groaned in agony. She had just enough time to realise what was happening, before the stone-grey sky fell into place around her, and the only thing left was darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People who write Loki and Mantis fanfiction deserve to... not have a building fall on their heads?
> 
> Also: ahhhh, first ever bookmark! Thank you :)
> 
> So, it's not really a cliffhanger, because they're obviously gonna survive. I mean, they haven't even met yet and this is supposed to be a Loki & Mantis thing. Next chapter, I swear - it's gonna be good! (Hopefully. This whole thing is kind of a geronimo, even though I thought I had stuff mostly planned out.)
> 
> Aaaanyway... This was not as amusing as I wish it was, but it's basically just setup, so nothing too wacky has happened yet.
> 
> Fare thee well, heckers! (but in a nice way)


	3. Stabby, stabby rocks.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Any things for me to fix, just say so :) It's just me on this, so I would appreciate the feedback.

What happened in no more than an instant for Mantis, seemed to take an eternity from the outside.

Peter, Drax, Gamora and Rocket jumped ship the moment the rumbling began, the up-thrust from Peter’s jetpack just enough to stop their bones breaking when they crashed into the sidewalk down below, and stumbled back to watch in horror as the floors collapsed, one by one, heading down. Each mass of floor, wall and office chairs fell into the one beneath it, adding that story’s weight to its own urban avalanche of motion. The further down the building a floor was, the more quickly it was demolished, until finally, the rush continued down underground, to the ex-building’s two subterranean basements, where blessedly, awfully, it stopped.

“Dear God,” Gamora whispered, and suddenly whatever spell had been holding the Guardians in silence was broken.

“Mantis!” Drax roared. “Mantis!” The warrior ran forward and began pulling frantically at pieces of concrete. “Mantis!” he shouted again.

“What the hell happened,” Peter muttered. “Rocket; what the _hell_ just happened?” The raccoon was silent, staring at the mountain of rubble where the building had once been. “Rocket!” Peter yelled, not caring that his voice cracked.

“I don’t-” Rocket started hollowly, then coughed. “I don’t know. The building should have held; my calculations-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gamora cut in, shaking herself out of her stupor. “We have to find her. There’s a chance she’s still alive.”

“What chance?” demanded Rocket angrily. “Look at that thing, Gamora.” He gestured to the two-story heap of broken stones. “She’s _dead_. There ain’t nothing we can do for someone who’s dead.”

Gamora grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, dangling his eyes right in front of hers. “You say that one more time, rodent,” she growled. “And I’ll carve that nose right out of your face. I don’t care if she’s dead, you understand? She’s _family_. We’re going to try.” She dropped Rocket unceremoniously on the ground, where he didn’t bother to get up again, and turned her attention to Peter, not giving the rodent a second glance.

“Peter, honey, you gotta focus, okay? We need you.” Peter could hear what she was saying, but his mind was still reeling, refusing to accept the events of the last minute. His thoughts were sluggish and unresponsive, refusing to move at any rate faster than a snail’s pace. Then a sharp impact exploded on his cheek, and the world caught back up to speed.

“Ow,” he yelped, rubbing his jaw. “What the hell, Gamora – you slapped me!”

“You can yell at me later, sweetheart.” She took his hand and looked unwaveringly into his eyes. “I know this is hard, Peter, but you’re our captain; we need you. Now _what do we do?_ ”

Oh, this was way too much. Peter had never been great at working under pressure. Action-hero-style pressure, sure; he could think his way out of a firefight as well as the next tree. But the emotional stuff? Maybe it came from growing up on a Ravager ship with nothing but a sea of rowdy pirates as role models – actually, scratch that; that was _definitely_ where it came from – but that kind of stuff just got him. It had started when he was just a kid, and all the guys at school had found out that they could make him throw the first punch if they just insulted his mom enough. Then it had just grown, and now, with Mantis, who was like a sister to him (or maybe actually was his sister – it was kind of unclear) trapped under a pile of rubble, he was frozen, unable to help.

No; not this time. He took a deep breath, like ocean-level deep, and held on tightly to Gamora’s hand.

“Right,” he said shakily. “Now my thermal imaging thingy won’t work through all this rubble, but Stark probably has something, in case she is alive. Until then, we gotta keep the rubble exactly the way it is, don’t disturb it in any way.”

Gamora looked over to where Drax was scrambling across the pile like a deranged squirrel looking for nuts. “So that’s probably a bad thing?” Peter nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

“Alright, but be gentle about it,” he called as she sprinted towards the concrete hill. Usually, Mantis was their default for handling Drax in situations like these (like she did the rest of the team, really), but she was… indisposed. Yeah. Not dead; indisposed.

“Rocket?” he said calmly. The tiny huddle of fur was still curled unresponsively on the ground. He needed something to do. “Rocket,” Peter said again, more firmly this time. “I need you with me, okay, buddy?” An unintelligible grunt, which Peter figured had to be a step up, so he kept going. “Get Stark on the line, dude. Explain what happened and tell him we need him here ASAP. Now, Rocket,” he added, and the raccoon stumbled to his feet, face unusually blank.

“Yessir,” he said flatly, pulling a holographic display out of his wristband.

So as not to interfere with the call, Peter moved a few steps away, and put two fingers to his comm, ready to keep up a constant stream of communication, in case Mantis was suddenly able to reply. He took a deep breath, and began:

“Mantis? Mantis. Hello? Hey; come in. Mantis?”

<><><><><>

“Neeueuhghhh,” Mantis moaned. Everything was dark, and there was a buzzing in one of her ears so invasive that she shot violently to one knee in a hurricane-flurry of instinct and yanked whatever it was out of her head, squeezing her fist around it. _Crack._

Now kneeling, she traced her gaze ahead of her along the walls of a… tunnel? The stone walls were strangely textured, with no rhyme or reason to the placement of the rocks within them, and jaggedly joined piles of stones protruded horizontally in some places like sideways stalactites. One of these was extended over her shoulder from a wall behind her, with its needle-sharp point so close to her face that she was lucky she hadn’t been impaled by her own sudden movement.

Perhaps five metres ahead of her, the tunnel turned a corner to where a gentle golden light was emanating from beyond her sightlines, diffusing in the dusty air so it cast no shadows and seemed to flow around the craggy rock faces like a liquid. It gave the silence a heavy, sticky effect.

At the thought of sound, Mantis was reminded of the buzzing in her ear that had greeted her return to consciousness, so she opened her hand to examine the object. It had obviously splintered under the pressure of her fist, but it appeared to have been a piece of machinery. In the directionless gold light, she could see the glint of newly exposed wires beneath the object’s protective white surface, like veins. The sight of the little object sent ripples through her unreactive mind, so she stared at it, trying to remember – oh!

Trails of fire came racing through her mind, burning away the fog to allow her access to everything that had happened before she lost consciousness. She remembered the flaring of the gravity well, the sudden rumbling sound, and a sharp impact on the back of her head. The building had fallen in, but in that case, where was she now? The Guardians had been in their fair share of cave-ins, and they had never looked anything like this.

The most useful thing for figuring out her location would have been her communications device, and she was tempted to be angry at herself for breaking it; but Peter would probably do that for her, so there didn’t seem much point. For the moment, she would simply have to explore, and hope the Guardians were on their way.

With that in mind, she rose unsteadily to her feet, tripping as her head swam and nearly impaling herself on a stalac- stalacside? Sharp, pointy, would-definitely-kill-you was the important part.

Considering the number of stabby rock formations crossing the path at chest or head height up ahead, Mantis chose to stand still for a moment longer and check if the world would suddenly change its mind again about which way was up. When it didn’t, she began to make her way slowly down the tunnel, bending and weaving to avoid the stone swords shafting from the walls.

The tunnel turned at a surprisingly precise ninety-degree angle; continued for a distance about equal to the one she had just walked; and then appeared to open without preamble into a stony chamber. Mantis took a step further and realised it wasn’t so much a chamber as an intersection; including the tunnel she had come from, there were three openings leading in, all barred with the same stabby-sword-rocks, although the chamber-walls were smooth enough.

She took these items in almost subconsciously, for her gaze was fixed on the source of the pooling golden light she had noticed earlier. An orb, glowing with what reminded her of glowing honey, hung suspended against the wall of the chamber directly ahead of her. It had no support to keep it there, and seemingly no substance, but it remained, pulsing steadily with such a concentrated luminescence, Mantis was suddenly aware that she should be feeling the need to shield her eyes. Its steady thrum was mesmeric and intoxicating, and she found herself drawing closer, enamoured with the indescribable impression of warmth it was sending her. She was barely two feet away now, so that it nearly filled her field of view, and she could feel an energy crackling in the air that reminded her of the taste of lightning. Almost without noticing, she raised one arm, reaching forward; reaching for the light.

If the orb’s light had not been filling her vision, Mantis might have seen the slight warping of the shadows to her left. If she had not been so hypnotised by its energy, she might have felt the minute expanding sensation in her ears from an unnatural displacement of air, as if the room were yawning. As it was, she had only a split second of sound to warn her, the unmistakable hissing sound of an object thrown end over end.

Luckily, life as a Guardian had forcibly improved her already inhuman senses to a state of constant vigilance, and that tiny audio warning was just enough for her to sway backwards, catching the dull gleam of metal as it flashed across her vision, barely a centimetre in front of her nose. A solid thunk to her right told her that the object had been sharp enough to imbed itself in a solid stone wall and suddenly, the light no longer seemed quite so sleepy.

For a brief moment, as it always did at the beginning of combat, her mind slowed the world around her and her veins seemed to flood with electricity. Using this moment of clarity, she fought her natural impulse to follow the projectile’s path, turning instead to find its source.

There, the directionless light glinting coldly off of his eyes just as much as it did his armour, was Loki, God of Mischief and pain-in-the-Avengers’-collective-asses.

Instantly, Mantis’s sense of danger went up another twenty notches of intensity. This was no small-time villain; despite the relatively minor damage he caused in comparison with some of the city’s more _dedicated_ foes, she knew Loki was far above her ability to handle alone.

There was another knife already poised for throwing in his grip and she knew she had only a moment before the world caught up to speed again, and the weapon embedded itself in her nervous system. Nothing in the cave could provide any meaningful cover, and the only exit point behind her was the tunnel she had come from, which she already knew was a dead-end.

At the thought of the tunnel, she remembered the stalactite-like protrusions which, if she could get enough of them between herself and the maniacal god currently attempting to slice her to ribbons, might be enough to confuse his sightline and give her an edge. If she were extremely lucky, he might even impale himself on one of them; if she were _un_ lucky, she would.

Retreating the way she had come was, as she had already established, out of the question. While it was the easiest-to-reach of the three tunnels in the room, she knew that returning to it would only delay the inevitable; she would very soon wind up pinned against the dead-end, with nowhere else to run.

The two other tunnels were one across from her, on the other side of the orb, and a second to her left, directly beside the murderous princeling. Mantis was tempted to flee for the far side of the room – really only a few metres away, in this small space – and were it anyone else trying to kill her, she might have trusted in her speed to carry her from harm, but if living with Thor had taught her anything, it was that Aesir were more than capable of moving at blinding speeds to obtain their desired objective. (True, one was pop-tarts and the other was her death, but the principle was the same.) Having been shaken from her mesmeric state, she realised now that touching the strange, glowing orb was perhaps not the _best_ idea, and the precious milliseconds it would take to dodge past would likely be enough to ensure she was impaled through the eye.

That left the tunnel to her left – the one guarded by a knife-wielding god – because of course it did. Still, in such situations, there was no time for indecision, so the moment she made her choice, she shifted her feet in preparation, and sprang sideways.

She was not confident enough in her skills as an acrobat to sail directly through the horizontal gap between two stalac-sides at the tunnel’s entrance, choosing instead to make a first leap to place herself in an easier position for the arc and twisting halfway in the air as she went, so she could then touch down with one foot and springboard backwards through the space. That decision most likely saved her life, for even as she finished her first arc and touched down with one foot, leaning backwards so her head was pointed at the space between the needles, she saw another knife split the air above her – exactly where she would have been if she had leapt directly through into the tunnel.

Her second, backwards bound took her neatly through into the tunnel, and she heard a curse behind her as she turned the landing into an awkward sideways roll under a few more stalac-sides. She sprang up immediately, not daring to pause for even a moment, and vaulted over another three stalac-sides in one go. The next set spanned almost the whole tunnel’s height, with the spaces between them too small for her to fit, so she was forced to sink to the floor and roll beneath them, costing her a few precious seconds, but hopefully offsetting the delay by the extra cover provided against another knife.

Except apparently not. Somehow, though she was moving quickly enough to risk being impaled at every turn, and putting more stalac-sides between them every second, she heard the woosh of another blade being thrown, and felt a slicing sensation along her cheek as she jerked her torso out of the way. She couldn’t stop, so she ignored the small amount of blood trickling down from the wound, and for a moment, she was actually chasing the knife that had inflicted it, until it vanished in front of her in a flash of green light, presumably summoned back to its owner for another shot. (And wasn’t that a happy thing to think.)

Luckily, since it appeared the stalac-sides were less of an impediment than she had hoped to her pursuer, the tunnel turned at a 90-degree angle up ahead, identical to the tunnel she had awoken in. Unfortunately, the suspended rocks meant that she hadn’t noticed it until it was no more than a metre in front of her, and now she was running full tilt at a stalac-side protruding from the wall directly ahead of her.

Somehow, she managed to twist on the ball of one foot, in a move which she suspected would have seriously damaged her ankle if she were human and only catch the tip of the spike on one hip as she launched onwards. Despite being clad in her usual combat outfit, the rock slid easily through the leather as she swung round, slightly tearing her skin and making her _intensely_ glad she had pivoted in time.

Ignoring the pain, she fled on, the echoes of footfalls behind her chasing along the stone walls and threatening to swallow her whole as she wove through the tunnel. Over, under, over, over, round. She was good at things like this, and though she didn’t dare look, she thought she heard Loki growing slightly farther away. She slipped between two more razor-sharp rocks- -and froze. Ahead of her was a blank wall, no turnings or stairs to the surface. The ‘tunnel’ led to nothing but a dead end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People who write Mantis + Loki fanfiction deserve to have reinforced ankles. (Yeah this chapter wasn't particularly wacky, work with me here.)
> 
> So... it's been a while. This is my first properly 'chaptered' fanfic, so I'm aiming for something in between a full story and a series of linear one shots. This is the most 'story' part other than the ending, so it should get easier. What I've decided is to always be working on this a little bit, but if my brain is not cooperating, I'll just go and write some one-shots or whatever to get the brain-juices flowing again, like I did this time.
> 
> That said, I'm so excited for their hanging out to begin :) As interesting as it is to try and write Mantis's viewpoint in a combat situation, she is at her best being weird and wonderful just with _people_.
> 
> -TheBookTheDragonSaved


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